iv : 2

In addition to the major over-arching trend described above that stretches the modern era of media, there are also smaller-scale patterns that reiterate within each new generation of platform.

Most importantly, as I started to analyze the number of units sold per year from one era to the next, I realized that TVs, VCRs, and iPhones all traveled very similar paths on the way to saturating a majority (51% or more) of American households — from what I’ve gathered, this seems to be the amount of time required for our supply-and-demand economy to bring the cost down to an affordable price for the middle class:

Here are the same three charts stacked on top of each other to highlight what’s going on here, because it’s pretty mind-blowing how tightly these correlate despite the 60-year spread between them: